The EREA centre (Enseignement et recherche en ethnologie amérindienne), originally founded as an autonomous CNRS research unit in 1986, brings together specialists in indigenous societies stretching from the lowlands of South America, particularly of the Amazon, to the Andes and Mesoamerica.

Through collaborative projects, the Centre explores comparative and theoretical perspectives on various themes, using ethnography as its principal research method. Often employing interdisciplinary approaches, research projects touch upon diverse sub-fields, including linguistic and cognitive anthropology, political anthropology, visual anthropology, and even ethnohistory. Certain projects explore more fields still, such as archaeology (Germ).

With their field work, EREA centre members aim to expand upon the knowledge of general issues affecting indigenous societies, but also to shed light on their contemporary transformations. They are involved with the communities they study and local institutions (through publications, teaching, reconstruction of knowledge, etc).

The centre holds a regular seminar and co-organises the Americanist Anthropology Seminar. Its members participate in teaching and supervising research in several institutions in France (University of Paris Nanterre, Inalco, EHESS, Quai Branly Museum) and overseas, where the EREA has created strong partnerships with numerous institutions in Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru, as well as in the United States and Europe.

The EREA centre, over the years, has built an international network of associate researchers, and regularly welcomes foreign colleagues and doctoral students. It is a partner of international organisations (ANR, GDRI, Pics) and is involved in the organisation of many national and international symposia. Since its creation, EREA's members have also been very active in the Society of Americanists.

Seminars

Programmes de recherche à l'EREA

During the last three decades, indigenous Amazonian societies have begun to occupy an increasingly active role on the political stage. Their organizations have undeniably entered the national political arena, their members sometimes gaining high-representative positions at the state level. These same organizations are also becoming principal actors in hundreds of “environmental” conflicts that are shaking the region, conflicts primarily against private corporations and state agencies. Nevertheless, their motivations and political project remain ambiguous, and their rhetoric complex. This research project aims to analyse this phenomenon in a comparative way, trying to highlight the specificities of each country in the region and the ways in which the borders of politics are beginning to shift. This project also intends to analyse this historical and social logics that these dynamics stimulate among Amerindian peoples with different cultural values.

This Group of International Research (GDRI), created in 2012 and renewed in 2016, joins together several research centres and institutions from France, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador, all of which, independently or in concert, research political anthropology of the Amerindian movement in the Amazon. Since the last three decades at the very least, the indigenous societies of the Amazon have become active players on the political chessboards of their respective countries. This phenomenon of “political fabrication”, or the politicization of the indigenous movement by Amerindians themselves, is observed in all Amazonian countries, though with particularities and differing intensities in each one. The Apocamo research group aims to understand the process of construction of an Amerindian political representation via a comparative analysis of the specificities unique to each country and of the ways in which today’s political borders are shifting and changing. This research reinforces the reflection on the re-composition and diffusion of new conceptions and forms of political action within the Amerindian communities of occidental Amazonia.

Indigenous Wayana- Apalaí knowledge – A new approach to restitution and its implications for forms of transmissionThe goal of this project is the empowerment and restitution to the Wayanas and Apalaís of sound, film, and photographic collections documenting the knowledge of these indigenous people of Guyana. The project also proposes a reflection on restitution practices and their impact on the transmission of “traditional” knowledge. Its originality lies with the central role accorded the studied populations – a Wayana-Apalaí team is actively participating in the conception of the portal (the tool of restitution) as well as defining selections, modalities of analysis, and conditions of access to the data.
Responding to local demand, the project includes collaboration with the Wayanas and Apalaís on a book documenting an important body of ritual chants and a study of Wayana museum collections, particularly those of the Quai Branly Museum, which holds ancient ritual objects referenced in the chants. The Amerindian Ethnological Teaching and Research Center is leading programs to develop audiovisual collections in collaboration with the societies being studied and this project will integrate the creation of modes of interactive distribution of synchronized sound and text along with multimedia links to texts and objects. The project unites domestic cluster partners (Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology, Quai Branly Museum) with those in Guyana, Germany, and Brazil.
Funding
Labex Les passés dans le présent
Partners
LESC
CNRS
Université Paris Nanterre
Musée du quai Branly
Université de Bonn (Allemagne)
Laboratoire d’Image et Son en Anthropologie (LISA) de l’Université de São Paulo (USP) (Brésil)
Musée des Cultures guyanaises (MCG) à Cayenne
Direction des Affaires culturelles (DAC) de Guyane
Conseil Région de Guyane
Association Ipê
Team
Coordinators : Valentina Vapnarsky (LESC) et André Delpuech (musée du quai Branly)
Lead researcher : Eliane Camargo (EREA/LESC)
Website
http://passes-present.eu/fr/les-projets-de-recherche/connaissance-active-du-passe/savoirs-autochtones-wayana-apalai-guyane#.V0QWcdeJfuc

Prediction is an interdisciplinary project (incorporating archaeology, ethnology, ethnohistory) on the change and collective decision-making in times of crisis during classic, colonial, and post-colonial periods in Mayan societies.

Germ : Group for the Teaching and Research on Mayans and Mesoamerica
The Germ (Groupe d’enseignement et de recherche sur les Mayas et la Mésoamérique) is a research group specialized in Mayan studies and Mesoamerica. It was founded with the aim of bringing together researchers from various fields of the social sciences (archeology, ethnology, anthropology, epigraphy, ethnohistory, linguistics) to work on different projects concerning the Mayas, and later, Mesoamerica. The Germ develops activities of research, documentation, teaching and training. It is the main coordinator of the international network for scientific research "Ritual actions and time: Creation, destruction, transformation in Mesoamerica (2015-2018). It also hosts colleagues, post-doc and graduate students from French and international universities and research institutions. The Germ follows three main principles: the debate between and collaboration among disciplines, with special emphasis on fieldwork analysis; the comparison with nearby geographic and cultural areas, but also with more distant societies, and the sharing of knowledge through teaching activities, at the theoretical and empirical levels.
Coordinators
Valentina Vapnarsky (LESC), Philippe Nondédéo (ArchAm), Perig Pitrou (LAS), Marie Chosson (INALCO)
Website
http://germ.hypotheses.org/

Creating, Destroying, Transforming in Mesoamerica: The Modalities of Ritual Actions and their Inscriptions in Time
This International Research Group (GDRI) joins together European, Mexican, and American partners, who reflect on the temporal dimension of ritual activity in past and contemporary Mesoamerican societies through a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective (incorporating archaeology, epigraphy, iconology, ethnohistory, ethnology, linguistics, and linguistic anthropology).

The Fabric of Heritage: Memory, Knowledge, and Politics in Indigenous America Today This project elaborates a comparative reflection on the avatars of the exogenous notion of “cultural heritage” in Amerindian societies, the ways in which these societies take possession of their “heritage”, and the resulting transformations (regimes of temporality, the transmission of knowledge, visibility, etc.).